Agile is a name (Posted to www.infoq.com )
Agile is a name. Simply that. You see a bit of land and call it "New Amsterdam", someone else comes along and calls it "New York", yet another person calls it "Mine". The name chosen says more about the person chosing the name, and their relationship with the named thing, than the named thing itself. When Agilistas call something "Agile", they are saying that they think it is a good (software) thing. Its a compliment. You may chose to call it common sense, they call it Agile.
Funnilly enough, the Agile community understands the value of labels and recently opined that any "certification" (label) gained from a five day training course that has a 99% pass rate probably isn't worth that much. True skills are earned over time through practice. This goes against standard practice in the quick fix/silver bullet software industry. As such, the Agile community is paying tribute to successful communities such as the doctor's, lawyers and accountants. I am a BA by training. I interview many ex-accountants who are now BAs. They would be horrified if an unqualified person were to prepare the statement of accounts for a company but they feel there is no problem that someone with a "Five day training course" specify the general ledger system. Its not them, the problem is that its the accepted norm in software. The Agile Alliance has recently spoken out about this practice. Mainly because we believe in "People over Process". You can learn a process in 5 days, but you can't learn years of practice in 5 days.
Before anyone gets upset by the whole 1, 2, 3 thing because I've not explained it properly. Alistair explains it very succintly but it takes a chapter or two. I'll try in a line or two, and get it wrong. No one in Agile is labeled 1, 2, or 3 individually. They are self selecting demographic groups. "Level 1 do not know and want to know the one best way to do something.", "Level 2 wants to know/knows many ways.", "level 3 knows there is a way". It is taken from the martial arts (Shu-Ha-Ri) and the way you learn them.
Posted by chrismatts at May 22, 2007 9:07 AM